Session Title: CentralNotice Banner Editor: What's new and What's next

Session description:

The CentralNotice Banner Editor is a new visual editor for designing CentralNotice banners used across Wikimedia projects. This session introduces the tool, demos its current capabilities, and opens discussion on upcoming features, limitations, and possible improvements. Intended for banner authors, campaign organizers, and anyone curious about how CentralNotice banners get built.


Session type: Presentation + discussion

Session duration: 45 minutes



Session language: English


Session venue: Space 5 (Floor 1), Saturday May 2nd, 11:00–11:45am CEST

Session format:

• Slides (~10 min): what CentralNotice is, the problem the editor solves, and how the editor fits into the banner creation workflow.
• Live demo (~10 min): walkthrough of how to use the editor.
• Q&A and discussion (~25 min): questions from the demo and slides, followed by open discussion on current limitations, possible mitigations, upcoming features, and feature requests.

Expected outcomes:

• Wider awareness of the CentralNotice Banner Editor and its current state.
• Documented list of feature requests and limitations surfaced during discussion.

Prerequisites: None. Useful if you have created or maintained a CentralNotice banner, or run a fundraising or outreach campaign that relied on banners.

Experience level: Any. Newcomer friendly.


Username for contact: @Oyelola_Victoria

Why I proposed this session:
I have been working on the CentralNotice Banner Editor as an Outreachy intern and now as a Technical Fellow with the Content Enablement team. I want direct input from people who actually create banners, so future improvements reflect their workflow. Also to raise awareness among people who create banners but may not know this tool exists.

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Raw session notes

Unconference session: CentralNotice Banner Editor: What's new and What's next
Phabricator Task: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T424074
Team page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation/Advancement/Community_Growth/Content_Enablement
Speaker: Victoria Oyelola (User:VriaA), Technical Fellow, Content Enablement
Slides: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CentralNotice_Banner_Editor_What%27s_new_and_What%27s_next.pdf

Date and Time: Saturday 2 May 2026, 10:15am - 11:15am CEST

Agenda:
Presentation
A brief overview of central notice
Introducing the central notice banner editor
Summary of updated workflow
Live Demo
Known limitations from V1
Upcoming features (see Phabricator workboard for more details: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/tool-centralnotice-banner-editor/)
Q&A + Discussion

CentralNotice is the extension that deals with banners that get shown on all projects (or defined projects, as it is granular). Banners are created from scratch with HTML/CSS/JS, with the possibility to preview them, but this creates a barrier for people who don't know the language.

For this reasons, a WYSIWYG editor has been made for CentralNotice. The editor focuses on the design step, without the need to actually code for it, since this step is simplified. You design what you want and get a workable code to be simply copy-pasted in the editor.

The demo shows that you can simply edit all the properties of the text, buttons and background with easy clicks, with the possibility of highlighting stuff that right now can be done in a difficult way. You can also design different banners depending on the medium it will be shown on (desktop, mobile, tablet, and so on). It is possible also to choose "one size for all", but there's the downside that it might show badly on non-desktop devices.

Known limitations: no localisation, only a limited number of templates supported, no dark mode, interactive styles cannot be customised by editor (hover, focus, etc.), no undo/redo functionality. All of this will be coming in an upcoming version of the editor, with the addition of an accessibililty checker for color contrast.

This is basically a tool that can be used by someone who has no CN rights to create the code and make life easier for CN admins.

Q&A + Discussion
Suggestion: In codex there is a standardised design token system, would it help with implementing dark /light mode. Response: She will look into it
https://doc.wikimedia.org/codex/latest/design-tokens/overview.html
Q: How difficult is it to add to new templates? A: difficulty is getting the editor to support the templates, to add a new template simply create a BannerTemplate object and change properties as required. but to add a template not currently supported you manually change the properties in the editor view
Q by Victoria: What is the expected behaviour for the buttons? What would you like to see a button do? A by audience: a banner usually has only one target, some banners might have a privacy statement link, A by Victoria: when a link is added to the text elements in the banner, the banner link(?) is cleared as it is bad practice to have multiple links in one banner
Q: What happens when there is an interactive element in banner and the x (close) position already exists, would it cause a conflict?, A: close button is positioned absolutely, it's not a child element (not nested) so not affected by that
Q: How hard is it to customise the template, for example i want an image, i don't want text, maybe 2 images? A: its a WIP, there is currently a template without a button, can add templates with just text, or just images, if urgent can manually make a new template. There is fulll freedom to edit atemplate already supported.
Q: adding image credits on the banner(?) A: it is currently possible to add an image as the template background
Q: Is it possible to add a background colour to the text itself? A: yes, you can also add a shadow to the text
Q: Images needed in central notice need to be hosted on commons, will the new banners still be restricted to that, cause she used a random image for the demo? A: yes, it will be restricted, an image lookup feature will be added to search an image on Commons, there's a lot of back and forth about adding images so that feature should help solve
Q: In mobile, still using the horizontal position of elements, is it possible to make it vertical, like image above and text below? A: yes, in the editor, you just have to restyle it. Suggestion: maybe create a mobile facing vertical template
Q to audience by Victoria: Is there a want for more font options and how is it supported, A: codex supports more font options so should look into that, Answer 2: a fixed set of options could be better for accessibility
Suggestion: community requested specifically for banners for events, and have their own codex, so how to make sure editor aligns with that(?)
Q: Will this also work for site notices? most likely not, cause site notices are wiki code A: not yet looked into
Suggestion: Dark mode could be a priority in upcoming features so it can be approved, A: it will be looked into, along with localisation next.

More resources:
User guide: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CentralNotice/BannerEditorUserGuide
Editor live link: https://centralnotice-banner-editor.toolforge.org/